The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (http://www.namus.gov ), a national repository for information about missing and unidentified persons, recently reached a combined total of 15,000 cases in its two databases.
The number of registered users has grown to 10,000 since NamUs was launched in January 2009.
NamUs has been credited with resolving 62 missing and/or unidentified person cases.
"Reaching 15,000 cases illustrates the exponential growth of NamUs," says John Laub, director of the National Institute of Justice.
"In 2009, we doubled the number of missing person cases in the system, and last year we nearly tripled it.
This continued growth is critical because with more cases in the system, more cases can be solved and more families can get the resolutions they have been seeking for so long."
The public may register to search and report information in the missing person database and may search, but not add, information about unidentified persons.
Law enforcement officers, coroners and medical examiners and other professionals may register to search and report information to both the missing person database and the unidentified persons database.
More than two-thirds of the 10,000 registered NamUs users are members of the general public; the balance are death investigation professionals such as coroners, medical examiners and law enforcement officers.